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Shaman Warrior, vols. 1-5 (Park Joong-Ki)
Shaman warriors have the ability to transform their bodies in various ways, making them formidable war machines. As this series opens, a legendary shaman, Yarong, meets his death under circumstances that seem highly suspicious to his servant, the massive fighter Batu. Batu swears to defend his master's child, Yaki, but he soon finds this far more difficult than he expected: shaman warriors are being hunted down and killed, with the circumstances of Yarong's death being twisted to provide an excuse. Batu at last decides he must take desperate measures to ensure that little Yaki survives and becomes able to defend herself.
Thus far, this is playing out like an almost gender-blind shounen/seinen adventure. There are more male characters than female characters (especially in the first volume), but the female characters we've encountered thus far are fighting, doing magic, and adventuring along with the men. These female characters are also generally drawn with reasonable bustlines and amazingly modest clothing. The story includes betrayal, loyalty beyond the grave, a variety of non-romantic attachments (siblings, master-servant, parent-child, team mates, etc.), and complex politics. The artwork is gorgeous, illustration rather than cartoon, along the lines of Inoue's work on Vagabond and Samura's work on Blade of the Immortal (and when we do encounter grotesques, they're all the more unnerving because they're so well-drawn).
Oh, and telophase? Batu the Destroyer traveling with little Yaki is just your kind of thing!
Shaman Warrior, vols. 1-5 (review) |
(FYI - that's teenaged Yaki in the icon.)
OK ... wild theories time. The Mr. and I don't think Yarong was Yaki's father. We think Yarong was Yaki's mother.
This may sound like total crack - after all, we have a number of pictures of bare-chested Yarong in vol. 1, and that's a totally masculine-looking torso, very much in the realistic mode: not tapered and bishie-ish, but compactly muscled and slightly stocky. But think about how Yarong has a tiny baby, and Batu keeps urging him to take it easy because "you can't fight anymore. Your body can't take it" and the General who sends Yarong off on his fatal mission apologizes that he had to "inform you of this while your body is still changing," and then later this same General thinks of Yarong with this statement:"I have plucked the most beautiful flower in all Kugai ... ."
I guess only time will tell.
Park gets a little weird with names: there is a character called Genji (female, and supposedly Batu's sister) and another called Aragorn (the tattooed warlord of a clan that's being forced out by the General). Genji is a lot of fun - frankly outspoken, a skilled fighter, and a master of disguise. Aragorn's a pretty good character too, but I keep twitching every time I read that name ... .
Yaki's experiences in the Butcher Camps are all too realistic, except in one area, and I think Park is actually to be commended for not going for the sexual angle in most of what happens to her. I also like how Yatilla gives her a reason to go on and be strong. He's a very promising character, and I hope we'll see more of him.
My only regret thus far is that Yarong was killed off so soon. He was just my sort of character.
Re: Smut and Sexuality (makes it easier to find ;D)
Yeah, I'm sure I mentioned Courtship Rite before - it's one of those great under-read things that is so much, much better than 99.9% of the crap that gets published. It has group marriages, gorgeous cloned female assassin/martial artists, tattooing and body sculpture art as a way of life for everyone, lashings of politics, poetic legends, cannibalism, scientists revered as priests (or priestesses), interesting male and female characters, and loads more. (The one thing it doesn't seem to have much of is non-het sex, oddly enough, given the variety of almost everything else it has.)
The cover you'll most commonly see for it (like on this Wiki page) is an actual scene from the book ... but it's amazing how the publisher managed to get such a misleading out-of-context scene on the cover, as opposed to the hundreds of other scenes that could have been selected. Yes, Oelita is cringing away ... she's surprised and she has reason to fear Joesai (on the left). But she's actually a very brave character.
Jazzing up tools and things used to be much more common. It shows up in some of the better fantasies ... Vetch's sister Yarrow's loom in A Wizard of Earthsea, for example, has a frame "inlaid with ivory." We're starting to get back to this with some of the computer accessories and such for making them look prettier. I once saw a musical saw with mother-of-pearl inlay (my late father-in-law played the saw ... you can hear him at the very beginning of this clip with the Sunshine Skiffle Band.)
Re: Smut and Sexuality (makes it easier to find ;D)
Oooh, don't even mention that man (perpetrator of Friday - "all girls wanna do is settle down and raise babies, even if they are kick-ass girls who can beat any guy's butt")in association with Courtship Rite!. He would never have the depth of anthropological stuff that Kingsbury does here!
Yes, it was only audio. I wonder if anyone has a vid of the Sunshine Skiffle Band. You can hear the saw at the very beginning - a weird metallic warble with a percussive little tunk! at the start of each note. He was playing it with mallets for that number, which the liner notes say was a style unique to him. Usually, people play the saw with a cello bow, which Bill did as well. (Hee, this site has samples of a saw playing various impressively pretentious things!)
Re: Smut and Sexuality (makes it easier to find ;D)
Oooh, sorry, no - I saw it at some craft-fair thing and didn't have a camera with me. But talking about it reminded me of Bill.
No, I got tired of Heinlein relatively early - never could figure out why people thought he was so great, anyway./p>